


Haze

by Shulik



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Dark Character, Darkfic!, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con, post-torture, seriously
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-12
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2017-11-11 23:26:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shulik/pseuds/Shulik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes they come back damaged, sometimes they come back wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haze

Her eyes are hollow, dark when they break into her cell, kicking down the door in a burst of righteous violence. The first two soldiers through are from District Seven, both of them are tall, fairly well-muscled and distinguished by that same wildness to them that Finnick Odair has learned to use so very well. 

They stumble as the stench hits them. It’s overpowering, the stink, blood and violence, human excrement and something rotten beneath it all. 

Nobody lives in a cage like this. 

The first soldier through, let’s give him a name for argument’s sake- call him Abel, or John- call him whatever you like, he won’t make a difference, he makes a _retching_ sound, nausea and wetness as he doubles up and heaves. 

He’s going to die first. 

When they're walking through one of the checkpoints, she's going to step behind him, just in time to escape the gunfire from the prison guards following them. The guards will raise their rifles at her and she will smile, wild and willful- the product of their tender mercies, through a mouth full of blood and broken teeth. 

That moment of hesitation will cost them their lives. 

“Come on,” the for-now alive John says to the man behind him, “there’s nothing alive here.” 

The cell is dark, there is no source of light- only endless shadows, thick and cloying, filled with a kind of malevolent sentience that neither one of these Seven boys have ever felt. 

They don’t see the shadows move in the corner, where the darkness is the thickest, most concentrated. She stands, slow and sinuous, spine unbowing from where she had been crouched in the corner, always watching the door. 

“Yeah,” Abel’s brother, Cain- or maybe something different, something easier to pronounce, something infused with the flavor of the sea says- “let’s go. We still have Mellark to transport.” 

She cocks her head, watches them take the requisite steps to leave her cell. 

“Psst,” she whispers and they both whip around, rifles at the ready and cocked at her. 

She raises both her arms, palms up and steps into the light. 

It doesn’t burn her eyes. Not like she thought it would. 

 

+

 

They have her shackled to the bed. For her own protection, they say, but she knows better. 

The nurse who had been there when she had first awoken, she’s refusing to come back. Stupid, really- to think that if she moves away from _her_ , that it’s somehow going to save her dumb grey, drab uniformed body. 

“Effie,” the man at her bed growls, “come on, you’ve got to start talking soon. They’re talking about finding a _permanent_ solution, you know what that means, don’t you princess?” 

Effie. 

That’s right, that’s her name. 

And the man is Haymitch, his hair hangs around his face, greasy and in dire need of a cut, he smells of alcohol and unwashed skin. His eyes, when she looks at him, are a bright silver grey. They almost glow. 

Effie wants them in the palm of her hand. They’d shine so pretty, she’d keep them close. 

“ _Please_ ,” hesitant, he strokes the broken skin of right hand, light as a butterfly, like he thinks he’s going to hurt her if he presses harder. 

Effie wants to laugh at him. The things her body has been through have shown her just how strong she is. Singed by fire and metal, she is absolute. 

Instead, she lets a tear fall free, large and perfect as it makes its way down her cheek, smudging the ointment from her wounds and leaving behind a perfect trail of pink. 

Color, color is beautiful. Effie wants to see it again. 

She watches Haymitch stiffen, dropping to his knees by her as he lets the hair fall around him in a protective curtain, stroking her hand almost feverishly. He looks like a small boy, penitent. 

“Please, I’m sorry…” it’s barely loud enough for her to hear, but Effie’s taught herself a lot about listening for the faintest of noises. It’s wet, a sigh breathed out in a broken voice and Haymitch keeps on stroking her hand. “I’m so sorry Eff, it’s all my fault.” 

Effie turns her face away from him, from the wet sounding sighs that disgust her, and the occasional pawing at her hand that she can’t resist because of the damn shackles around her wrists. 

She feels a weight dip the bed. Haymitch has lowered his head onto his elbows. At this angle, she can see all the new greys that he’s gotten since she last saw him. 

When she smiles, the half-healed cut on her lip cracks, flooding her mouth with copper salt, a familiar taste that she’s began to sorely miss. 

She worries at her lip for the rest of the night, even after Haymitch leaves, waiting for the cut to start healing before she bites through it again and the tangy taste comes back, flooding her senses with fire and sparks. 

 

+

“What is your name?” the soldier behind Paylor is tall, with a head of bright red hair and the sort of scowl that tells Effie everything she needs to know about him. 

Raised in one of the poorer districts, if the faint aura of dirt sticking to him is anything to go by, has hated the Capitol his whole life and wants desperately to hate her by proxy. Can’t quite bring himself to, though. She’s a torture victim, an ex-prisoner of war, small and malnourished, with a shaved head and big, blue eyes that she makes sure to blink extra slow at him. 

The tips of his ears turn a charming, brick red and heat coils below Effie’s belly, at the very core of her. 

Pleased, Effie looks at Paylor, making sure to keep her head down and her eyes lowered. 

Katniss Everdeen murdered the former President of District 13. 

Interesting, a sly voice whispers into Effie’s good ear, cool and familiar- maybe Katniss is going to be worth more than they thought, all those nights in prison, recovering from being bled out, electrical burns still sizzling in her skin. 

Maybe… maybe not…

Either way, Effie makes the effort to fidget with her hands, wringing them aggressively as her voice waivers. 

The soldier makes an aborted movement in her direction, stops and shuffles in place. 

Effie keeps her head down, doesn’t meet anyone’s gaze- she doesn’t want them to see how _fun_ she’s finding this. 

“Euphemia Lilith Trinket,” Effie says with a quiver. She bites at her lip, cursing the fact that it’s healed and she can’t be walking around with a self-inflicted wound right now. 

She’s got _plans_. 

“Alright Euphemia,” Paylor says with a note of doubt in her voice, “do you have plans? Do you have anywhere to go?” 

Effie turns away, jaw working as she swallows. It looks painful, she knows, especially because of the long, angry scar moving from the hollow of her throat to the tip of her ear. She looks like someone had tries to cut her face in half. 

That’s because they _had_. 

Besides being a truly horrifying scar, it’s also one of her biggest weapons against these people. She doesn’t know whether it’s her Capitol status or whether the infirmary in Thirteen is truly as ill-equipped as she thinks it is, but instead of using liquid stitching that would leave as little scarring as possible- they used the old fashioned, black threat to sew her face back together. 

She looks like a science experiment gone terribly wrong. 

It’s a shame that people are so easily led by the sight of a disfigured pretty girl. 

She sighs and the sound is like a broken moan, piteous in the empty cavernous hollow of Paylor’s borrowed office. 

Paylor has never been a politician, she’s never had to learn how to play the lying game as well as this. She’s a soldier, hair shorn almost as short as Effie’s, no makeup and dark bags under her eyes. 

It’s almost laughable how easy this is. 

“That’s alright,” Paylor says with the kind of gruff kindness of a soldier that has seen pain and knows the effects it can take on the human body. “You’ve got time to decide.” 

“Thank you,” Effie swivels her head to face her again. The tears that she had been so laboriously working on shine bright in her eyes. “ _Thank you_ so much,” she breathes out and hugs her arms around herself in a small show of vulnerability. 

Something bright unfurls in her chest and spills into her veins, liquid gold setting her veins on fire and igniting her from within. 

Effie shivers, bites her lip and meets the soldier’s eyes behind Paylor- “thank you.” 

 

+

 

She hears him come in during the night. 

Effie keeps her eyes closed, her breathing even and listens as Haymitch- unmistakable smell of too many years of hard living on his skin- putters around her room before settling down into the chair beside her bed. 

Haymitch, for a Victor, is noisy as he settles in. The force of his stare is a physical thing, like a weight settling over Effie’s bones, heavy and unwelcome. 

He sighs. Noisily. 

Effie bites her tongue from the effort of not laughing. 

“I know that you spoke to Paylor today,” Haymitch begins, soft. Hesitant. 

Its so strange how only a year ago, the Effie she dimly remembers before the blood and the pain, the Effie with the _brightness_ and color, softness and smiles- she would have given everything to hear Haymitch speak this way to her. 

As it stands now. Effie feels nothing. 

“She said that you were upset… that you cried.” 

That’s almost a kind of truth. 

Effie very pointedly does not snort. She lets out a small, infinitesimally wispy sigh- one of a slumbering princess after a hard ordeal and turns her back to Haymitch. 

The silence after she moves is deafening. 

“I’m so sorry princess,” Haymitch’s voice breaks, cracks in a way that Effie has never heard before, so accustomed to his gruff growls and mockery. 

She thinks that she might have once cared a great deal for this tone of his. 

 

+

 

She sees the slumped figure of Gale Hawthorne alone in the hallway. 

Coming back from one of her mandated therapy sessions with Dr.Aurelius, Effie is smiling to herself, walk light as air as she moves down the corridors of Thirteen to the infirmary. 

Virgil Aurelius had signed off on her release papers today, citing her as a classic case of post-traumatic stress disorder, panic and anxiety attacks with only mild trouble reintegrating back into society post her ‘ordeal’. 

‘Ordeal’, that’s what they all keep calling it. Like spending three months being tortured in every which way possible had been a small spot of trouble that Effie had run into. Nothing that three-times a week therapy sessions and some good anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic meds couldn’t cure. Listening to the stereotypically jovial doctor had been a trial in of itself, the round glasses on the tip of his nose had glinted in the artificial light of his office and Effie had briefly wondered why he didn’t opt for one of the Capitol’s laser eye surgeries, before the fresh swell of rage had overtaken her and she had shut her mouth in fear of ripping his throat with her teeth. 

For a moment, staring at his falsely concerned face, eyes pitying as he looked at her big scar, the myriad of small ones strewn throughout her body and the badly healing skin grafts on her elbows- Effie tasted the rich, coppery liquid of his blood on her tongue. 

She had restrained herself. Promised to come back for the man once her primary objective was finished, the one goal that she had stayed alive for, through the darkness and the pain- the idea bright and feverish in her broken mind. 

And now, the perfect opportunity presented itself to her. 

She walks up to Gale, making sure to step a trifle heavier than she usually would so as not to startle him. As she walks, she worries at her lips with her teeth, biting them red. Flush full of blood. Her hair has grown back a little bit since they’ve brought her here, the soft baby blonde gives her a halo, a striking contrast with the rest of her. She’s still thin and with her looks unobscured by her Capitol heavy makeup or her wigs, Effie looks much younger than her thirty years of age. 

She works it to her advantage. 

“Gale Hawthorne, right?” she asks him shyly, slipping into his field of vision with her eyes downcast and her whole posture screaming broken doll vulnerability. 

If there’s one thing that prison has taught Effie Trinket, it’s that men appreciate a vulnerable woman. 

“What’s it to you, Capitol scum?” Gale barks out. He probably recognizes her voice from the countless reapings she`s officiated. 

Effie makes sure to flinch visibly, shuddering back as Gale`s eyes soften in alarmed apology. He`s registering all of her wounds, her scars. The absolute change that`s come over her. 

Effie knows the exact moment that he breaks, reaching out for her with an apologetic wince- “listen, I’m sorry-“ and that’s when Effie breaks off, running down the corridor like she’s running for her life. 

It’s only in her room that she stops, panting as her newly fixed lungs (smoke inhalation) contract with effort. 

It’s coming together much faster than she thought it would. She wants to dance. 

The bright, golden thing in her chest is singing with anticipation, eager for blood and violence. 

 

+

 

Gale Hawthorne might be a loyal idiot who’s getting his ass metaphorically kicked by a baker, but he’s also a well-mannered son of a widow who’s been taught not to hurt women. 

Effie isn’t surprised to see him outside her room the very next day. 

She stops walking, hunching over and wrapping her arms around herself. 

“Effie?” Gale unfolds his large frame from where he was sitting on the floor, apparently waiting for her. “Miss Trinket?” He clears his throat. “I wanted to apologize to you face to face for what I said yesterday, how I behaved. I know you’ve been through a _lot_ ,” involuntarily his eyes dart to her scar, “and it was pretty shitty of me to yell at you.” 

Effie stands there, silent before venturing- “you can call me by my first name. It’s alright.” 

Gale, when he smiles, looks very sweet. It’s a shame about what she’s going to do to him, really.


End file.
